Today’s New York Times features an article by Amy Chozick about the fading away of Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the wake of her electoral college (though not popular) defeat to a known sexual predator.

The article regrets the fact that Mrs. Clinton, after so many decades of leading the way for women in politics, has now been forced to the sidelines. “On issues of sexual assault, Mrs. Clinton has remained mostly muted, her hands tied as liberals rethink how President Bill Clinton’s accusers were dismissed and shamed in the 1990s. Even the #StillWithHer crowd seems to agree that the #MeToo movement cannot feature Mrs. Clinton.”

And therein lies the rub for Mrs. Clinton.

To fully step into her power as a feminist leader, she has to account for her hubby. This is where the personal meets the political and things get complicated.

Chozick asks whether Mrs. Clinton should “be held responsible for the badly behaving men around her.” The answer is no, we are only responsible for our own behavior.

But her behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal was not okay. For years she determinedly looked the other way as Bill had his trysts. This was known when they were on the campaign trail in the 1990s, and the Lewinsky affair revealed just how deeply entrenched Bill’s proclivity to sexual predation had become.

All through that scandal, Hillary stood by her man.

Even after they left the White House, when she could have divorced him without any political blowback, she continued to stand by her man.

We don’t know if he continued his sexually loose ways after retirement. I for one don’t care, as long as the encounters were consensual. Let him eat cake. Let her eat cake too, for that matter! I’m not one to argue sententiously for the sanctity of marriage.

But if Hillary wants to be an icon for women, she should help us understand what was in her mind as she stood by Bill, even knowing that he was getting young Monica to jack him off in the Oval Office.

I wish Hillary would write a real memoir digging into the full complexity of the calculus for women seeking power and success in a world still so overwhelmingly patriarchal.

Salma Hayek’s brilliant essay, revealing how she had to demean herself to Harvey Weinstein in order to achieve her creative masterpiece Frida, opens a lurid window into the contortions required of ambitious, talented women in this man’s world. Whether they are seeking success in science, religion, education, politics, the arts, or business, as feminists have been documenting for years, there is no level playing field for women.

These days, feminist critique is finally coming out of women’s studies classrooms and journals and into the mainstream. The whole nation saw the glass ceiling in action in all its glory, holding fast against the first woman who actually might have been POTUS.

At the very least, when all is said and done, Hillary deserves a good biography of her life, maybe a dramatic bio-pic made by someone who gets it, like Salma Hayek.

We need to understand what pressures women like her to put up with “bad behavior from those around her” in the quest to achieve higher goals.

We need to understand why she has stuck by Bill all these years. Hollywood celebrities get to marry and divorce with abandon, but not politicians, particularly women politicians. Why not? Why do we insist that women stand by their men, no matter what? Other countries are relaxing this standard—look at France, or Chile.

We will never know if Hillary would have been a stronger, better candidate had she divorced Bill after their shabby reign in the White House ended. All these years, she stuck by her man. Maybe she loves him. Maybe he’s changed with age and become a good companion for her.

Hillary and Bill in 2016

The bedroom does influence the boardroom, for women as well as men. Hillary Clinton is someone who could tell us just how much this is so. But she’d have to take the risk of standing on her own two feet, as Hillary Rodham, Clinton be damned.